The Neverending Story

When asked about my favorite children’s story, I have no satisfactory response — too many come to mind. I expect there is still a finite number of Little Golden Books. Fairy tales from the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Anderson spring easily to mind. Comic books came early to my life. My father’s interest in science fiction rubbed off, I’m on the lookout for another copy of Waldo by Robert A. Heinlein, published the year before I was born, that continues to come to mind regarding the importance of community to an individual’s survival. Classics like Winnie-the-Pooh and Alice in Wonderland are a continual delight. Much more could be said about The Once and Future King and Princes Bride.

I could branch out into early radio theatre and the grip of The Shadow clouding men’s minds. Saturday movie serials, with their Perils of Pauline endings to lure us back next week, certainly hold an important part in growing an imagination.

I finally focused on The Neverending Story by Michael Ende coming up on its 40th anniversary of being translated into English. [Note: Do also find his book, Momo.] There are many places in The Neverending Story where the story could spin off in quite another direction. Each time we are simply told that that is another story for another time. This is quite true to life. Every family tree and autobiography needs to be reminded that none of this stuff we like to concretize into “reality” is as straightforward as it might seem. We lose much when we forget how slim the thread is that leads to any moment.

Near the end of the book, as Bastian returns the book that has shifted his life and finds the bookstore owner has had his own encounter with the Childlike Empress, Mr. Coreander reminds us all — “Every real story is a Neverending Story.”

It is extremely important to read the book and not rely upon the movie. If you can, find the edition that tells the story with two colors of text (red, for the context in which The Neverending Story is being read, and green, when The Neverending Story is being lived). One such version has an ISBN of 0-385-17622-8.

Yes, it is alright to translate Mr. Coreander’s response as, “Every real life is a Neverending Story.” Now it is time to take the unknown story that could be built upon as another story for another time and in this time follow where that might lead. We are not constrained by what has happened so far. To not honor the Neverending Story process is to numbly await Nothing.